Today with us on the Incite Change Podcast is Chef extraordinaire Anthony Sestito, a good friend of Mauro. Anthony is here to give us insights into the intricacies of cooking, nutrition, and fitness. Anthony doesn’t only make food taste good, but also makes it fit your training and body composition needs.
Before going into culinary school, Anthony wasn’t very interested in fitness. It wasn’t until he started training for firefighting that he developed the love and passion for being in the gym. He’s now consistently at the gym 5-6 days a week, and opines that for what it’s done for him physically, mentally and emotionally, he will never turn back from it. It’s one of the greatest things he’s ever done, seeing first hand the ability to control one’s well-being, and having the power to change your body composition.
Understanding how to utilize all the techniques and flair of cooking can help make food to be health-conscious and yield very good results. He speaks of the misconceptions in the fitness industry where everyone recommends very bland, and one-track-minded meals. Everybody and their gym buddy are eating broccoli, rice and steak or chicken. It serves a purpose, and it hits targets, but it’s not always enjoyable. Once you have a better understanding of your calorie and macro breakdowns, it allows you a little bit of freedom to play with your food.
Chef Anthony speaks about the culinary industry, where a standard technique is to manipulate the fat in recipes to improve the flavour and taste. It’s probably where the misconception that healthy food has to taste bad came from. He suggests you can always find a way to make nutrition fuel your goals, but no one recipe fits everybody. You are your own case study, keep trying iterations of your own recipe, and through trial and error, you will find what works for you.
Anthony shares the secret of “Sous Vide”, a cooking method usually employed in high-end restaurants that you can now use in your meal prep. It’s cooking under vacuum in an emerging circulator. As an example, you do 10 portions of lamb shanks individually bagged, in an emerging water bath, and now you have 10 portions of lamb shanks that can be reheated faster than you will take if you were to cook from start to finish. And it can last in your fridge for 7-10 days. Just reheat and get on the go. It allows you to prepare things in bulk and have them individually pre-portioned because you have them under vacuum there is no oxidation and the chance of it going bad. “Sous Vide” ensures you retain more nutrient and reduce waste of foods
Finally, Chef Anthony advises chefs to not make their profession an excuse to not stay fit. Non-chefs also have the chance to learn a lot over the internet, and understand there are going to be failures as you travel toward your desired results. And remember, if you want it, you will make the time for it.
EPISODE TIMESTAMPS:
[01:30] Anthony On His Culinary Background and Fitness
[07:25] Growing Up and Love For Fitness
[12:45] Try and Error-You are your own case study
[15:00] How Cooking is Done in High-End Restaurant
[18:00] Sous Vide Cooking and less water
[20:00] Meal Prep at Home and Eating Healthier
[25:00] Understanding Macronutrients
[27:30] The Science behind Food and Science
[29:00] Meal Prep Service
[33:00] Fitness and working through adversities
[35:00] Being A Fit Chef
[39:00] If you want It You Will Make the time
[41:00] Don’t overcomplicate Anything Just get started
QUOTES:
“Now more so than ever you need to focus on nutrition, Understanding how active you are nowadays and how to incorporate nutrition within that kind of goal that you got that’s what caught my eyes now ”
“For somebody who is a chef, You’re pigeonholing yourself if you make your occupation your excuse you have more knowledge about food than most people do already. For anybody who is not a chef there’s so much out there so much opportunity for you to broaden your horizon you don’t have to be cooking at a chef-level”
“There are going to be so many failures before you finally get to the results you want. You have to fall and fail and go through those experiences and learn”
“I think there is a tonne of information out there, so much content, so much knowledge about there is almost too little to no excuse for anybody now. The there only thing that is the challenge for everybody is time but if you really want it you will make the time”
LINKS
Fitness Goal Focused Meal-Prep: Eatprepped